1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an audio-visual timepiece and more particularly to an electronic audio-visual timepiece which uses the synthetically-produced voice of a character to audibly tell the time and which has an animated display of the character showing his body's movement in order to visually indicate the time with his body's movement being in sychronization with his voice.
2. Description of the Prior Art
U.S. Pat. No. D82,245, entitled Watch Dial, issued to Irving Breger on Oct. 14, 1930, teaches an ornamental design for a dial of a watch in the arms of a cartoon figure function as the hands of the watch.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,747,330, entitled Animated Time Piece, issued to Henry Tupone on July 24, 1973, teaches a time piece which has animated motion resulting from an annular member which is mounted slidably around an eccentrically mounted, rotatable wheel. A time mechanism rotates a shaft on which the wheel is eccentrically mounted at the rate of one rotation per minute. The time piece also has a rotatable disc which is concentrically mounted on the shaft and which has an animated appearing object disposed thereon.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,461,665, entitled Animated Novelty Clock, issued to Edward F. Cielaszyk on Aug. 19, 1969, teaches a spring wound novelty clock which has a decorative design and which is equipped with a characterized object which is animated for a predetermined period immediately following each time the clock is wound.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,796,043, entitled Continuous Wipe-Out Clocks, issued to Ronald William Ebdon on Mar. 12, 1974, teaches a timing device which provides a pictorial representation of the passage of time.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,310,909, entitled Analog Electronic Time Piece, issued to Masanori Fujita on Jan. 12, 1982, teaches an analog time which has a plurality of optical displaying elements in the form of pointers which are radially disposed. The pointers are displayed optically in response to a clocking output. The short pointer is displayed separately by lighting up either one of the short displaying segment adjacent to the lighted long pointer displaying segment in order to prevent the longer pointer from being displayed alone when the displaying segments for the long and short pointers to be lighted up coincide thereby enabling the long and short pointers to be easily distinguished.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,998,045, entitled Talking Solid State Timepiece, issued to Robert W. Lester on Dec. 21, 1976, teaches a talking timepiece which will have all the same characteristic of a normal wrist watch, but with the read-out a spoken tone, which will actually give the time to the nearest minute, in a voice composed from sufficient information bits to be a reasonably faithful reproduction of either the owner's voice or the voice of a person of his selection. The voice may be recorded in any language with or without other extraneous information.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,287,584, entitled Speech Synthesizer Timepiece, issued to Akira Tanimoto and Kashihara Mituhiro on Sept. 1, 1981, teaches a speech synthesizer timepiece which provides audible sounds indicative of time and/or calendar information. The audible sounds are followed by an adjective phase which represents such a unit of the preceding time and/or calendar information as month, day, day of the week, hours and minutes.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,279,030, entitled Speech Synthesizer Timepiece, issued to Sigeaki Masuzawa on July 14, 1981, teaches a speech synthesizer timepiece which produces audible sounds indicative of updated time information.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,280,209, entitled Electronic Alarm Clock, issued to Jac A. Mooney on July 21, 1981, teaches an electronic alarm clock which includes a microprocessor for comparing the existing time expressed as digital data with the stored digital value.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,870,818, entitled Solid State Digital Automatic Voice Response System, issued to William A. Barton and John E. Stork on Mar. 11, 1975, teaches a signalling system for providing an automatic voice announcement of a condition being monitored.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,266,096, entitled Audible Output Device for Talking Timepieces, Talking Calculators and the Like, issued to Tomohiro Inoue and Sigeaki Masuzawa on May 5, 1981, teaches an audio output device which is useful in timepieces or calculators and which features a prestored and preselected order of digital codes representing speech words and pauses. These digital codes are outputted through gate circuitry responsive to pause codes.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,294,516, entitled Moving Picture Apparatus, issued to Philip A. Brooks on Oct. 31, 1981, teaches an apparatus for creating the effect upon a viewer of a three-dimensional moving image which includes a stacked array of a plurality of alternating transparent and liquid crystal members.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,312,057, entitled Electronic Timepiece Providing Audible and Visible Time Indications, issued to Kazunari Kume on Jan. 19, 1982, teaches an audio-visual electronic timepiece which includes an oscillator circuit, a frequency divider which is electrically coupled to the oscillator circuit, a minutes-counter which is electrically coupled to the frequency divider, an hours-counter which is electrically coupled to the minutes-counter, a decoder which is electrically coupled to the minutes-counter and the hours-counter, and a display which is electrically coupled to the decoder. The audio-visual electronic timepiece also includes an identification circuit which is electrically coupled to the minutes-counter and the hours-counter, an information signal generation circuit which is electrically coupled to the frequency divider, a control circuit which is electrically coupled to the identification circuit and the information signal generation circuit, a switch circuit circuit which is electrically coupled to the control circuit and a sound-producing element which is electrically coupled to the information signal generation circuit. U.S. Pat. No. 4,205,517, entitled Alarm Electronic Timepiece, issued to Fumikazu Murakami and Takuro Fukuichi on June 3, 1980, teaches an alarm electronic timepiece which includes a seconds-counter and days-counter.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,665,700, entitled Watch with Ornamental Running Indicator, issued to James S. Ditello on May 30, 1972, teaches a wrist watch which includes a case having a radial casing extension which houses a pendulum visible concurrently with and adjacent to the face of the watch. The pendulum is connected to an extension of the pallet arbor of the watch to be oscillated during the operation of the watch so that the pendulum provides a moving indication that the watch is operating and also provides an ornamental effect.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,355,381, entitled Electronic Timepiece with Electro-Optic Display, issued to Masanori Fujita on Oct. 19, 1982, teaches an electronic timepiece which includes an optical display having a number of separate display elements in the shape of time-indicating hands, a clock pulse generator which generates clock pulses, time counter which counts the clock pulses and generates time data and a selector which receives the time data and provides selected outputs of time units which are representative of time.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,309,701, entitled LSI Device Including a Liquid Crystal Display Drive, issued to Toshio Nishimura on Jan. 5, 1982, teaches a circuit for driving a liquid crystal display device.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,308,534, entitled Multiplexing Liquid Crystal Display Device having Different Display Formats, issued to Tomoo Yamamoto on Dec. 29, 1981, teaches a multiplexing liquid crystal display device for displaying a figure.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,338,600, entitled Liquid Crystal Display System Having Temperature Compensation, issued to Jeraldo G. Leach on July 6, 1982, teaches a data processing system for a liquid crystal display.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,289,383, entitled Light Dot Matrix Display, issued to Jack Schwarzschild on Sept. 15, 1982, teaches an electro-optic display of the type operable to provide an image viewable either in the transmissive or reflective modes.